


Like Skipping Stones

by daroos



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Journeyman
Genre: Gen, fixit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-13
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2018-01-08 14:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1133619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daroos/pseuds/daroos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan Vasser has a time travel problem. The Doctor might just have a solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Where are we?” Rose asked excitedly, clawing her way upright from where the TARDIS had tossed her in transit.

The Doctor straightened his jacket with a grin that mirrored hers. “Go see!”

Rose rushed for the door with her usual enthusiasm and peered out a crack in the door. A Chinese dragon went undulating by followed by a float full of brightly-dressed people with drums. “There’s a party going on out there,” she said, delighted.

“Yeah -- you said you wanted something a bit more familiar.”

“So where are we?” The Doctor pointed down the steep of the hill the parade was climbing to a monumental red suspension bridge, spanning a bay of dark blue water -- San Francisco. 

“When are we?”

“2008. It’s the double emperor Moon Festival. What do you say -- a little Dim Sum, a little bit of shopping, martial arts demonstrations? Not to mention Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge and excellent hill walking.”

“What are we waiting for?” Rose took The Doctor’s hand and they wove into the crowd. People threw firecrackers and children perched on parents’ shoulders, craning to see over the front rows. They watched the procession for a few minutes before they ducked into a small restaurant where little Chinese ladies pushed steaming carts around for a break from the crowds.

They rolled out of the restaurant themselves an hour later and a few kilos heavier. The onlookers were disbursing slowly to look through bins of goods stacked extra high for the festivities and clump around street performers and buskers catching business from the pedestrians. A man in a hurry pushed between them walking too quickly towards an alley.

The Doctor spun to follow him with an alarmed look. Rose stopped. “What? What is it?” She turned. The alley was empty and the man was gone. “What’s wrong?”

“Everything.”  
\--  
“What is that?” Rose asked finally.

The Doctor put the finishing touches on something that looked like a cross between a divining rod and a cat toy with a small TV antenna attached vertically to it. 

“Tachyon tracker.” He smiled grimly. “Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“What does it do?”

The Doctor gave her a look. “Well that should be obvious.”

“Well yes, but where are the tachyons going and why do we care?” Rose asked in exasperation.

The Doctor adjusted his glasses to peer closely at something that was blinking in a complex pattern. “You know when you throw a rock in a pond, you get a ripple? Tachyons do the same thing, but with rocks through time.”

“Somebody is throwing rocks?”

“No. Yes— no. Someone is dragging them about on strings.”

“Through time.”

“It didn’t look like any teleport I know of,” he reasoned mostly to himself.

“Rocks.”

“Well, people. That man that disappeared, to be specific. I’m having trouble pinpointing   
him though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor drawled, bending the antenna at an odd angle. “The whole area is   
riddled with these little pinpricks that are messing with my— oh!” The Doctor went haring off downhill, half-pulled at a run by his divining rod. Rose ran after him, dodging jubilant festival goers. A few hundred meters from the waterfront he was jerked to a halt at a bus stop. “Oh! Very unusual!”

“What? What is it?”

“There’s pre-ripples coming through. He should pop out in just a—“ a bright flash of light and a visible ripple through the air, and the man from the alley appeared lying on the bus stop bench. The divining rod jumped and wiggled until The Doctor yanked the cat toy portion off and stowed it in his breast front pocket. The man was late forties, short blond hair, and appeared to be asleep. He started awake, glanced quickly around himself and rose to move off quickly.

The Doctor blocked his path. He turned to avoid The Doctor he ran into Rose. “Hey, what’s the idea?”

“We need to talk to you,” Rose said quietly.

“Yeah, and I have to get back to my son.”

“You just appeared out of nowhere,” The Doctor said, delighted. “No ship, no energy field to protect you, just, _pop_.”

The guy gave The Doctor a nervous smile like one might give a person in a tin foil hat who wanted to have a chat. “I really have to go.”

“Wait, please. We’re travelers too,” Rose hissed, glancing around for onlookers in a conspicuous manner. The man glanced down at her shoes and at The Doctor, giving him a piercing once over as though trying to see through him.

“Yeah, looks like you are.” He looked thoughtful. “Are you on a job?”

“A what?” The Doctor asked.

“A job. Can you come with me? I really do have to pick up my son. It’s not far -- my brother is keeping an eye on him.”

A look passed between The Doctor and Rose. “Yeah, ok.”

“I’m Dan by the way.” Dan held out a hand.

“I'm The Doctor and this is Rose.” The Doctor introduced, shaking it enthusiastically.

“You’re a doctor of what exactly?”

“Everything. And it’s just ‘The Doctor’.” Dan hailed a cab with expert ease and they   
piled in.

“Brittain?”

“Yeah, I was born in London,” Rose filled in. 

“And you?” he asked The Doctor. Increasingly residential streets streamed by in early afternoon haze.

“Here and there.” At Rose’s look, “The North.”

“So you’re not from San Francisco?”

“No.”

“That’s so weird; I’ve never met a traveler from outside the city.”

"Really? Isn't that part of being a traveler?" Rose asked.

They stopped at a smallish beach house in a crowded neighborhood by the park and climbed out of the taxi. Dan payed when it became clear the British couple had only money that was either not contemporary or from the wrong country. Dan was much taller than Rose had thought, and much more heavily built than The Doctor, facts she only noticed when standing beside him. The taxi drove off and they piled up to one of the wooden homes. Dan rang the doorbell energetically.

A dark haired woman with a small baby answered. “Some of us need to sleep, Dan,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek in a familiar greeting and looked pointedly at the pair behind him. “How was the festival?”

“I had some thoughts on _Starsky and Hutch_.” 

“Really,” she stated more than. “I’ll go tell Jack.”

“C’mon in.” Dan ushered them into the entryway. “I’m just going to…” He trailed off,   
gesturing vaguely towards the back.

The Doctor poked around the entryway and Rose looked out the garden. “Both of you against the wall.” A man had come down the stairs while they were distracted and had a gun pointed at them. Dan came from the kitchen area with a second handgun at the ready.

“You would be Jack, I’m guessing,” The Doctor said good naturedly and sauntered towards the indicated wall.

Rose backed up quickly, bumping into a hall table. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know, but when my brother tells my wife our emergency phrase, I don’t really   
worry about what, and I get on with the who and where.”

“Is Zach okay?” Dan asked, sounding nervous for the first time.

“Yeah, Theresa has everyone in a safe place.”

“Lets just put the guns down, how ‘bout?” the Doctor asked. He looked earnestly from one brother to the other. “We’re unarmed, I promise. Just wanted to have a chat with Dan here about his recent travels.”

“How do they know about that?” Jack asked, suspicion clear on his face.

“I don’t know. They were waiting for me when I came back .”

“Are you with the Feds? InterPol? What?”

“We’re not with anyone!” Rose’s half-screamed statement brought everyone else up silent. “Now would you put your stupid guns away and let us explain?”

“My brother is going to pat you down.” Jack gestured with his gun to both of them.  
Rose had 35p and her house key. The Doctor had his Tachyon Tracker which now genuinely looked like a cat toy and a blinking divining rod, his sonic screwdriver, a paper which identified him as a “Completely trustworthy individual deserving of the highest esteem,” a strip of photo booth photos of another man and Rose, several paperclips, currency from at least a half-dozen places, a stethoscope and a banana.

“How did you fit that all in there?” Rose asked, looking at the pile.

“It’s bigger on the inside.” The Doctor wiggled his eyebrows and leered amicably. With a practiced shake he got his coat back into its usual shape.

The brothers put their guns away but remained on guard. Everyone sat down and pretended to be friends. “You said you were travelers, but you aren’t from San Francisco.”

“Yeah.”

“You go back or forward in time and follow someone through their lifetime helping to put their lives back on course?”

“Well no, not exactly,” the Doctor improvised. “We’re a bit more... directed than that.”

“But you travel through time, and you’re not crazy,” Dan stated, narrowing his eyes critically at them.

“Well, the crazy part is always debatable,” the Doctor said, grinning at the brothers until it was clear they didn’t share his joke.

“Oi! Speak for yourself.” Rose jostled him in the shoulder. “We are time travelers   
though.”

“How do you do it then, if you aren’t like my brother?” Jack asked, leaning forward.

“We’ve got a ship. A little… ship. Your way sounds fun though too!”

Rose grimaced, “It sounds awful, getting dragged about.”

“How do you know about me, if you aren’t like me?”

“Right. That thing over there,” the Doctor pointed to his divining rod, “is a Tachyon Tracker. It can tell me when tachyons get perturbed, like when you punch your way through time. And let me tell you, this whole time/space is riddled with holes like an old wool blanket. I didn’t notice it before, but once I saw you… well, I could feel how everything is off.”

"Where did you get that?" Dan asked, pointing at the Tracker. "Could someone else be using one to track me?"

"I built it!" the Doctor said proudly. "And no, probably not. Tachyons are tricky to find -- more art than science."

“Did you know what's causing his jumping about?” Rose asked.

“Maybe.” The Doctor pondered. “Something is perturbing the local space/time -- it’s changing things that shouldn’t be changed.” They all stared expectantly at him. “Well that can’t be happening, so Dan here is getting harnessed to put things right by whatever means necessary.”

“Why him?” Jack had forgotten his gun and was thinking hard.

“The Joseph Lee Comet,” Dan said in the manner of someone having an ‘ah-ha’   
moment.

“The what?” Rose asked.

“I was born on the same day the Joseph Lee Comet passed over North America. I was told it had some significance related to my… condition.”

“Of course! It must have granted some sort of resonance with the time vortex which makes you easier to pull around -- sort of a cosmic string.”

"How do you know?"

"Well I don't -- not for sure -- but I have a good idea. An inkling, you could say." The Doctor grinned winningly.

"Can you tell for sure? Is there a way to cut his... string?" Jack asked, eagerly.

"May I?" The Doctor gestured Dan forward, leaning in himself. He laid his fingertips gently at Dan's temples, closing his eyes. Dan shot his brother an alarmed look but remained still. A frown of concentration drew together the Doctor's eyebrows. "Hm... How did that get there?"

"What?" Dan asked, clearly agitated.

"Have you ever traveled to a different dimension?" the Doctor asked, clearly perturbed.

"Different— no. Just through time."

"You have some void stuff on you. Not a lot -- minute amounts really -- but that's very—" The Doctor drew back as though he had been shocked. He scrambled for his stethoscope and listened to one side of Dan's chest, then the other.

"Void stuff? Is that dangerous? What are you doing?" Dan demanded.

"I think I know why you time-travel so well." The Doctor said, frowning furiously. "You've got some Time Lord on you."  
\--  
What followed was a long explanation about Time Lords, time travel, aliens, TARDIS' and how exactly Rose got to be traveling with an alien Time Lord time traveler in a TARDIS. Dan explained that his time travel had begun almost a year before after another traveler died mysteriously.

"Isn't that hard on you?" Rose asked when he explained the first time he woke up in only his boxer shorts.

"No more sleeping naked," he joked. "It's gotten better -- I've gotten a handle on it so if I'm out with Zach and need to travel, I can get him home or call Katie to pick him up before I have to go. And I'm getting better at coming back close to when I left, so the missing persons' reports have stopped and my boss doesn't think I'm using. The less I've fought it the better it's been: the more I'm convinced I'm doing something important."

"Indeed you are. I think we can safely say this universe would likely have imploded by now, except for you travelers' intervention."

"Universe. I just help people -- individual, small people."

"Yes, well. But those are the most important kinds of people! Mister pivotal universal figure will find his way back into his destiny if something taps him off course, but those ordinary people -- those ones that nobody would notice -- those are the big ones. You help put them back on track -- on _the_ track. If they didn't— if something stayed changed, that little pinprick in time becomes a rip and then a rift and before you know it, there's another Loma Prieta and it's all downhill from there."

"You keep saying the people I run into are 'off their path'. What's knocking them off?"

"I don't know." The Doctor rubbed his chin in an aspect of furious thought. "But we have to find out. You said the numbers of travelers were dwindling and that something was probably killing you off. If the universe reaches out for someone to fix a hole, and there's nobody there to fix it, things will rip apart. We should get back to the TARDIS -- there's some equipment in there I could use to track your path."

"That might be a problem." Dan gave his brother a significant look. "I have to go - I've been holding it off but..."

"When will you be back?"

"As soon as—"

In a ripple of reality, Dan was gone.

Rose smiled nervously at Jack, who put his gun in a shoulder holster. "You're taking this all quite well."

Jack smiled boyishly. "I didn't at first. I almost tore our family apart over it. I thought Dan was back into the cards or drugs or something. Luckily... Well, he showed me it wasn't all some delusion."

"And you believed him?" Rose asked. Jack gave her a sad look. "I'm sorry -- it's just that there aren't a lot of people who would believe it, even with evidence."

"You sound like you've tried that more than once."

"Yeah."

"I'm a cop. I believe what I see, even if what I see is unbelievable."

"Well I think it's lovely. You know, the family—" Rose cast about looking for the right word, "—solidarity."

"Uncle Jack?" A blond boy of around eight was on the stairs looking at the Doctor and Rose with wide eyes.

"Hallo." The Doctor smiled widely. "You must be Zach."

Zach narrowed his eyes at the Doctor and looked at his uncle for direction. "It's okay -- they know," Jack said. "Come on down and meet the guests. Your dad should be back in a few."

"More traveling?" Zach asked with a weariness older than himself.

"Afraid so," Jack replied.

Zach sat next to his uncle on the couch appraising The Doctor and Rose. "You travel too," he told The Doctor with a steady look.

"We do. How would you know that?"

Zach frowned then shrugged. "Shoes?"

"Yes, what is it you all keep going on about with shoes?" The Doctor looked down at his trainers, perplexed. Dan chose that moment to reappear at a jog in the foyer. He was sweaty and had a day's growth of beard.

"Dad!" Zach threw himself at his father heedless of dirt. 

"Zach! Hey buddy -- I missed you."

"Can we go home now?"

"It's fine to bring him with to my TARDIS. He seems to know a thing or two about time   
travel himself," the Doctor offered, all big smiles.

"I want to see his ship!" Zach enthused.

Dan frowned. "His ship. How would you know about that?" Zach looked down, the picture of a guilty child. "What have we talked about about eavesdropping."

"It's not polite," Zach mumbled. "But he's got a ship!"

"Is it safe?" he asked Rose.

"Oh, completely. It's parked, right Doctor? Didn't forget the parking break this time or anything?"

The Doctor grumbled, "You forget it once and they're all over you. What are you the parking brake police?"  
\--  
The Police Box was right where they had left it. Jack dropped them off on his way into the office to look at some lab work which had just come back.

"So is your ship invisible, or something?" Dan asked, looking around the busy street. He grimaced. "I can't believe I just seriously asked that."

"Nope -- it's right here." The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS and slipped in. Dan gave   
Rose one last doubtful look before he followed. Zach pushed to get in first.

"Holy-"

"WOW!" Zach slipped his father's grasp and went running up the ramp to the main   
pillar.

"Don't touch _anything_ ," Dan almost shouted.

"He'll be fine," Rose reassured. She closed the door behind herself. "Back there is where the Doctor will want you."

Dan stopped and leaned against a railing padded with what looked like rubber mats to give himself a chance to adjust to the very alien surroundings. "So this Doctor -- have you known him very long?" He asked in his ‘casual reporter’ voice.

"Not so long -- a bit over a year, really. It feels like forever," Rose said with a wide smile. 

"The things he's shown me— oh!" she exclaimed, "We don't even have the words."

"Are you and he..."

"Together?" She blushed. "No. I mean, we were kind of— and then he changed and..." She trailed off, completely confusing Dan. "We just travel together for now."

"Ah. Of course," Dan said, not understanding exactly what had gone on, but knowing Rose would jump at a chance for something more if she got it. "Can I ask you something important?" Dan asked, looking Rose in the eye. She nodded hesitantly. "Should I be trusting him with my life?"

"I trust him with mine every day," Rose said, rather too quickly. She pursed her lips in a guilty expression.

"But."

"The kinds of things he has to decide about... Sometimes it isn't pretty. Sometimes   
everyone doesn't live, you know?"

"You make it sound like he's in a war," Dan joked.

A dark look flitted across Rose's face. "Sometimes he forgets he isn't."

Dan mulled this over in silence.

"I will do everything in my power to make sure you and your family are safe and live as normal of lives as possible. You have my word. If you would like me to stop interfering in your life, I will, but your help could mean the difference between a hole in the universe getting torn wide enough to suck the Earth's solar system in, and everyone going on -- business as usual -- never having known they were almost erased from existence." The Doctor had appeared from the bowels of his ship, a box load of wires and circuit boards and things Dan couldn't identify clutched to his chest.

"Hey -- if you got answers in that box of electronics, my wife has been waiting for them for a year and a half. Do what you gotta do."  
\--  
"What did you mean when you said I had Time Lord on me? And what did you mean by ‘void stuff’?" Dan had been sat in the control chair with wires draped over him like robes of state and an improbable headpiece composed of circuit boards, chunks of crystal and something that might not have been out of place in early lobotomies placed on his head. Zach stared at him with an air of awed expectation as though he expected his dad to begin playing music or blinking like an overly-enthusiastic Christmas display.

Rose smiled. "I know this one! It's this sort of stuff you get on you when you travel between dimensions, right?" The Doctor nodded distractedly, tightening something. "So when you go through from one dimension to another, you have to travel through this space where nothing is -- the Void -- and it gets on you like mud on your feet, you know?"

"But I've never traveled between dimensions; I've always just gone back."

"Right," the Doctor broke in. "You haven't gone through the void, but something on you has. The Joseph Lee comet is so notable because it passed close enough to Earth to be visible twice, and only twice, and was never seen again. It was never seen to have exited the solar system and there has been no regular recurrence since those two sightings. If you look at the time vortex at those times, you see that the same comet punched a hole straight through from March 1923 to July 1972. And it's not just that. The comet punched a hole not just through time and space but through universes. It was on a very specific trajectory."

"You said that wasn't possible," Rose said.

"Exactly -- not since the end of the Time Lords. The walls between realities have stiffened up and exchange between them ceased. This comet isn't a natural phenomenon; it's using Time Lord technology and it is traveling with deliberation and intent."

"Doing what?" Dan asked from under his wires.

"Seeding realities with Time Lords." This statement was met with resounding silence and confused expressions. "It's like this: the Time Lords in whatever universe the comet came from were locked in a losing battle with the Daleks. They knew they weren't going to survive the Time Wars but they knew the Daleks would be taken down in the fight so they weren't going to break off. But if some part of the civilization could be saved, you could dehydrate it, make yourself some powdered Time Lord, and put it on a giant shaker which can travel through realities to sprinkle them with a bit of your essence -- to place the seeds for your people to rebuild themselves with. It's bloody BRILLIANT. I mean, Time Lords in this reality never would have managed it -- they were too caught up in their own individual survival -- but this is just..."

"So he's somehow become a Time Lord because a Time Lord arc from another dimension went flying over him sprinkling comet dust on him when he was born?" Rose said, disbelieving.

"No, but he has the potential to BECOME a Time Lord. As would anybody else affected by this Joseph Lee comet -- no more than a few thousand in each time I would guess. But if you think about it, this comet is doing the same thing across every reality it travels through. I would bet that somewhere, there are some Dalek Time-Lords having a rude awakening..." The Doctor mused.

"I'm human," Dan said as though speaking to a very small child.

"Yes. And no," The Doctor said. "You are for now, but if you were to look into the Time Vortex and go through a regeneration, you would come out the other side a Time Lord, if a slightly different strain than myself."

Dan closed his eyes deliberately, shaking his head as though attempting to dislodge something. "This is all terribly interesting, but why don't we get back to the reason you asked me back here?" he asked, looking pointedly at the controller The Doctor had forgotten was in his hand.

"Right -- sorry. Let me start this up." The Doctor hmmed and hawed over the display screen while Rose and Zach tried to watch over his shoulder and under his elbow respectively. "It's something temporally and spatially local," the Doctor said, finally.   
"Say 100 kilometers or so?"

"Laurence Livermore," Dan said.

"Laurence who?" Rose asked.

"It's a national laboratory -- physics, advanced weapons development. All sorts of science geek stuff. A guy named Elliott Langley knew about travelers but not much else. He refused to talk to me. He said it would be too dangerous."

The Doctor immediately began pulling his equipment off of Dan in handfuls. "Right. I'll drop you at your house and Rose and I will take a look in these laboratories. With the readings I took off of you I should be able to pinpoint the location with my screwdriver."

"You'll let me know if you find anything?" Dan asked, pinning the Doctor with a look.

"We'll let you know,” Rose assured him.  
\--  
The TARDIS parked by an irregularly shaped lake in a little park on the Laurence Livermore National Laboratories campus. The large building next to the lake was as close as they could pinpoint to where the emissions were coming from within the TARDIS and the next phase of the search required them to be on foot. "I always feel so stupid in a lab coat," Rose said trying to settle it so it hung less like a limp white joke. The Doctor clipped an ID badge with her picture and little else on it to the lapel of her coat.

"But isn't dress up fun?" The Doctor asked, a big grin on. Rose shot him a glare. 

"Right -- stay close." The building was immense -- eight stories tall and dug far into the hard clay earth by the look of it. The Doctor followed his sonic screwdriver about the lobby and to the elevators.

"Up or down?" Rose asked, looking nervously around.

"Down."

"You sound so sure." Rose joked.

"Scientist like to be high above, or deep down below. Given that this fellow has kept whatever he is doing going on for the last 35 years at least, it's probably been kept well hidden,which means down,” the Doctor replied matter-of-factly.

"Of course." Rose pressed the down arrow.

The hallways in the bottom floor were 50's chiche complete with a formica floor in taupe and flesh tone. They strolled down the hallway scanning each doorway before moving on. The second and third floors from the bottom were the same. Floor -5 caused the Doctor to stop. "We're getting something in here." This floor was particularly abandoned; dust in the corners and cobweb swags on the air vents. He stopped at a door with 'Langley' made from a label maker stuck on it.

"Couldn't we have just looked for the one with 'Langley' on it?" Rose asked, leaning against a dirty wall.

The Doctor ran his sonic screwdriver over the door, unlocking it with a loud clunk. "That wouldn't have been any fun. Stay here -- I'll be back." He ducked into the room before Rose could say anything, popping back out seconds later with wide eyes.

"What is it? What have they got in there?"

The Doctor's eyes got, if possible, wider. "It's a... a juvenile TARDIS."

"What?" Rose tried to push past him. "You said yours was the only one."

"The last one," The Doctor murmured.

"So it can't be a baby TARDIS."

"You know 'can't' is a dangerous word around us. It must have been thrown out from Gallifrey before the sector was time locked."

"But that was..."

"A long time ago, yesss." He looked thoughtful. "But a TARDIS takes millennia to grow -- a whole bunch of millennia especially if an amateur is raising it..."

"So they've got a TARDIS."

"They've got a TARDIS."

They stared into their separate patches of space, both deep in thought. Rose broke the silence. "I don't get it -- how is their TARDIS making slits in time?"

"It's not... really. It hasn't been raised properly -- wasn't socialized by a coven of Time Lords and Ladies -- and it's screaming out over its treatment. Those screams are pock-marking a local area of time -- not far enough to reach outside of the San Francisco area and not strong enough to reach more than a few decades in any direction."

"So we get in there, fly it out to somewhere safe, problem solved."

"It's not that simple." Rose gave the Doctor a look that clearly asked 'why isn't it that simple?' "This TARDIS is like one of those feral children they find in the woods, raised by wolves. It wouldn't know how to work with us to fly even if it was inclined to do so. Not to mention it's still a juvenile -- you would be lucky to squeeze into it and I would never fit with these knees and elbows."

"But I thought TARDIS'S were bigger on the inside," Rose protested.

"That is true, but this one is the size of a dog igloo on the outside."

"Well if it's that small we could just lift it into our TARDIS and away we are."

"Just because it's smaller on the outside doesn't mean it's lighter. Mine can get moved on a truck but only because the chameleon circuit is set to something so light.”

"Could you... set the baby TARDIS to something light?"  
\--  
"What are you waiting for?" Rose hissed. The Doctor was poised by the baby TARDIS, coat off, sleeve rolled up, a very nervous look on his face. The TARDIS was in its natural form, a soft coraline structure with an open hatch a golden retriever would squeeze through, but which would cause some trouble for an adult.

"It might bite my arm off."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well it's not exactly tame."

"How is it going to bite your arm off?"

"How do things normally do it?" The Doctor hissed, looking, if possible, more alarmed. "Easy does it," he said, more to himself. He began whistling low, running his other palm over the hull (hide?).

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to soothe it. Don't startle me like that." The whistling resumed, and he stuck his hand in, tentatively. The rest of the arm followed, and The Doctor was soon up to his shoulder in TARDIS. "Grab my ankle, would you?" Rose did so and The Doctor managed to get his head inside it, other arm flapping about outside with Rose hanging on to his ankle 'just in case'. "Almost got it." There was a hammering sound from deeper inside the TARDIS than seemed possible. Abruptly the Doctor was wedged inside a dog igloo.

"Seriously?"

"Help me out of this thing, will you?"  
\--  
"I can NOT believe that we just did that."

"It was fun though, wasn't it?" The Doctor grinned, setting the TARDIS/dog igloo down   
in their TARDIS' floor.

"I can NOT believe... They actually believed you when you said it was a 'scientifically profound' igloo."

"I have a trustworthy face. I should know -- I haven't always had a trustworthy face."

"I know. I saw it." Rose teased.

"Well I had the psychic paper."

"It said 'Dog Igloo Inspector'."

"It did?" The Doctor looked perplexed. "Good thing they don't read identification in this top security military research facility."

"Good thing they don't notice police boxes littering the lawn." Rose looked at the baby   
TARDIS and nudged it with her foot.

"Don't do that!" The Doctor admonished.

"Well what are we going to do with it?"

"That is the question. Food is a first order of business, I suppose."

"I'm not really hungry."

"For the TARDIS."

Rose rolled her eyes. "What does a TARDIS eat?"

"Exotic gasses. Space dust. They're filter feeders, but this little girl has been starved for who knows how long. She'll probably need something a bit more concentrated." He found a fire extinguisher, circa 1950, with which he began to spray down the igloo. The gas was readily absorbed by the skin of the TARDIS. "This will do for now -- here." The Doctor handed the can to Rose and moved to the central column to take off.

Still spraying the igloo, Rose asked, "Where are we going?"

"You wanted to tell Dan about what we found, didn't you?"  
~*~  
The trip of the hundred kilometers to Dan's back yard was rougher than most trips covering thousands of years and a million star systems' distance. The TARDIS bucked like a spooked horse, landing off kilter on an ornamental shrub. "She does not like traveling with another TARDIS in her," the Doctor commented, petting the inner hull placatingly. "Lets move the little one out then. No sense in getting mine more worked up than necessary."

Rose was out of the TARDIS with her half of the igloo when they were spotted. "What are you doing? And what happened to my chinese elm?" Katie Vasser stood in her back doorway, hands on hips in a fit of righteous indignation. Zach peered around her legs in excitement.

"That's the Doctor and his ship," he almost whispered to his mother. "Do they have a dog?"

"Hallo." Rose tried to smile reassuringly but was nearly bowled over when the Doctor pushed on his side of the igloo, thinking it was stuck.

"What is that? Why are you- Nevermind." She sighed. "I'll put on the kettle."

"Milk and sugar please!" The Doctor called.

Zach clambered down the porch steps, looking at all angles of the igloo and crouching down on all fours to try to crawl inside. "No you don't." Rose picked him up from under the arms and set him back on his feet. "That thing might bite your head off and then your mum would skin us alive, I imagine."

"You can touch it very nicely on the outside though. She'll like that." The Doctor ran his fingertips along what for all the world looked like pressed formed plastic. Zach did the same, wonderingly.

"It's warm." He was delighted. "Why's it a she?"

"All ships are she's, aren't they?"

"If all of them are she's, how do they ever reproduce?" Rose asked astutely.

The Doctor grinned madly. "That's one of the mysteries of the universe, now isn't it?"

"That. Is a ship," Katie stated, looking worriedly at all of them. "That's a dog house."

"It LOOKS like one, but it's really a ship." At her dubious look, "Promise!" The Doctor protested.

"I'm going to get Dan." Katie disappeared for a minute and reappeared with her husband.

"You came back," Dan sounded surprised.

"I said we would," Rose replied, sounding offended. Dan quirked an eyebrow at her.

"I was just catching Katie up on what you were telling me about the Joseph Lee Comet."

"Yeah -- I wasn't quite clear on all of that. Are you saying my husband is an alien?" 

Zach's eyes got big and he stared at the Doctor in anticipation.

"No. He's sort of a hybrid, actually. You see, Time Lords have this ability -- this way to cheat death. When a Time Lord is nearing death, he or she can regenerate. It's a sort of whole body reset. You're still you -- all the same memories -- but you're not you. You've a different face and a new body. New teeth -- I never get over that one. It's not the most convenient, but it does the trick. If Dan goes through one of these regenerations he'll come out the other side as a full-fledged Timelord."

"Can you do this indefinitely - do you live for ever?" Dan asked.

"Normally it's limited. You live for as long as you were meant to. With you it might be more or less than normal. Less I would imagine - I wouldn't count on it for more than three or four regenerations." The Doctor stopped his frenetic explanation. "You're taking this very well," He said to Katie.

"My husband travels through time. He's apparently part alien. I've had to learn to cope with this kind of thing,” she said in an on edge way as though she were holding on to sanity with her fingernails and at the same time, very used to doing so. "What about my son? Has this comet dust gotten in to him at all?"

The Doctor's eyes grew wide. "I hadn't thought of that. I suppose we'll have to wait and see. I won't know until he's older if the same stuff got into him in any concentrations..." At Katie's alarmed look, "It won't do him any harm either way. If yes, then he'll be like your husband when he grows up -- minus the unexpected time travel, barring unforeseen circumstances. If no, he'll be a normal human."

"You'll come back to let us know?" Dan asked. The Doctor nodded as though it were a foregone conclusion.

Katie invited them in for tea and the Doctor explained how to best care for the TARDIS. 

Zach listened eagerly to the Doctor's second heart and Jack stopped by, "Just to make sure everything had settled down okay."

"You'll take good care of her." The Doctor looked anxiously behind Dan at the igloo now nestled between a grapefruit tree and a prickly bush in their small back yard.

"Feed her twice a week, talk to her lots, anything classical for when we're not here," Dan replied by wrote.

"Right. And lots of physical contact until she's big enough to get in to. She's been lonely for a long time and will need reassurance."

"Are you sure about leaving it here?" Dan asked for what must have been the tenth time.

"You're perfectly qualified. Well, mostly qualified. You're the most qualified person I know in the universe, after me."

"That doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement," Katie said, looking dubious.

"From him it is. Believe me," Rose said.

The Doctor cast about the yard, counting things off in his mind. "Aand... cell phone!" 

He held out a hand towards Dan.

"Which one?"

"Whichever." Dan pulled out his PDA and gave it to the Doctor, who fiddled with the battery and handed it back. "That's a little upgrade. It will get reception whenever, never run out of power, and it has my TARDIS number in it, so if you need to contact me..."

"Whenever?"

"Any time after the invention of the radio. And it should be able to call through time as well."

"Wow. I can't thank you enough for all of this." The Doctor smiled widely and pumped Dan's hand with great enthusiasm.

"It was my pleasure. Truly. Human Time Lords!" He almost cackled in glee. "I can't WAIT to see what happens! Ring me up if you have any problems!"

Rose kissed Dan on the cheek. "Good luck." She waved to Katie and Zach took the Doctors hand and disappearing into his TARDIS.


	2. Chapter 2

"Oi! You have _voice mail_?" Donna asked, disbelieving.

"And why not?" the Doctor asked, fiddling with the beeping mobile. Somehow the   
message was routed through the TARDIS PA system.

It was an American -- a middle aged man by the sound of the voice. "Yeah, hi. This is Dan Vassar in San Francisco. You said to call if I ever... Something's come up and I might be needing some guidance soon here."

"Who's that? He sounds American -- is he another one like Captain Jack? Could do with more like him."

The Doctor looked troubled. "His name is Dan. We should look into this."

"Dan? That's it? I got that from the phone message!"

"He's from San Francisco." Donna made throttling motions at the Doctor to express her frustration. The TARDIS gave a violent jerk and settled with some coaxing.

They were in Dan's back garden under a stretching grapefruit tree. The Doctor strode to the back door and knocked smartly. A pensive face peered out from behind the kitchen curtain and opened it for him. It was a boy of perhaps thirteen in the lankiest part of growing up, where nothing seemed to be in the right proportion. He had straw blond hair sticking at angles only achieved by a studious lack of brushing and thoughtful blue eyes which looked from the Doctor to Donna, weighing them both. "It's Zach, isn't it?" the Doctor asked, smiling broadly.

"Doctor," he replied in confirmation. "Most days I thought I had dreamed you." In the awkward way of teenagers, he stepped back from the door without inviting them in, expecting them to follow. "Dad's in the bedroom."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, heading up the stairs. When Donna moved to follow him he turned. "You'd best wait down here -- it might be rather a... private matter."

Donna rolled her eyes. "What? Doctor-patient confidentiality?" she asked pointedly.

The Doctor shifted uncomfortably. "Something like that."

This left Donna with Zach, both of them in increasing social discomfort. "I'm Donna," she introduced herself.

"Zach," he replied, looking up the empty staircase. Seeming to remember his manners, 

"Can I get you something to drink?"

"A cuppa would be lovely." At Zach's confused look, "Tea."

His mouth made a little 'oh' shape and he went back to the kitchen to put on the kettle. 

"Are all of you British?"

"All of who?"

"The other woman was British, too."

"Martha?" Donna asked.

"No. It was a flower name."

"Oh."  
\--  
Dan was in bed in only the most perfunctory manner, sitting on top of the comforter with a laptop on his thighs. At the knock he looked up, saving an article he was writing. His eyebrows went up when he saw it was the Doctor. "Making house calls?" he asked, grinning.

"Only for special patients." They shook hands and the Doctor sat in a wingback chair by the window. "So, not that I don't enjoy pleasantries, but what is this all about?"

"I'm sick." The words settled into the room like muck settles in a pond. "Really sick, if you believe the doctors. I was thinking I might have to use that regeneration trick you said I should have pretty soon."

"What are you sick with?" the Doctor asked, pulling out his sonic screwdriver.

"I have a tumor in my right lung. It's slow growing but it's starting to impair lung function. I'll be in trouble in the next few months, according to the specialist."

"That is very odd."

"Odd?"

"Time Lords don't get tumors."

Dan's eyebrows went up. "I'm not one, yet."

"Hm. Too true. Right lung, you said?" The Doctor scanned his chest with the screwdriver, hmming.

"Well, your specialist is quite right. I imagine you're experiencing shortness of breath, pain in the right shoulder, that sort of thing?" Dan nodded. "Well, it's good you called -- we need to take a trip."

"I need to call Katie. I'll be down in a few minutes." Dan shooed the Doctor out of his room.

Donna and Zach were seated at the kitchen island with tea and milk and a packet of biscuits Donna had found. "Can you help my dad?" Zach asked solemnly.

"I believe I can. I also need to get a look at you, if you don't mind." Zach nodded his assent.

"Hm." The Doctor frowned. "You seem to be taking after your father,’ the Doctor said, scanning the teen.

"How?" Zach asked.

"Like you inherit things from your parents like how you look or congenital diseases -- you inherited some of your father's comet dust. You need to come with us as well as your father."

"Do we finally get to GO somewhere?" he asked, trying not to sound too hopeful.

"Most definitely."

"Comet dust?" Donna asked.

Dan chose that moment to enter the kitchen. In the better lighting and standing up, illness was evident in the circles under his eyes and labored breathing. Unusually lean muscles hung off his over-large frame in sad contrast to the vitality the Doctor had seen when there last.

"Yeah. I apparently got some powdered inter-dimensional Time Lord in me," Dan responded to Donna’s question with a rueful snort.

"As does your son," the Doctor added.

Dan smiled briefly. "Lets all get going then. I told Katie we would be gone." Dan shot the Doctor a questioning look regarding Donna but, uncommon for a reporter, left it alone. In the garden Zach ran over to the dog igloo, smiling proudly at the Doctor.

"She's grown a ton since you left." True to word, the TARDIS seemed to have made up for years of neglect, now about a third the size of the Doctor's TARDIS, though still an igloo. When Zach ran his hand over it she seemed to coo contentedly. The Doctor grinned indulgently, copying the action.

"You'll spoil her at this rate. I've never seen a growth spurt like this before. She'll be big enough to fly in a few years."

"Do they grow with an instruction manual?" Dan joked.

"The Mark 80's? Yes, I believe they do, though I never abide them, personally. The   
instructional manuals, not the Mark 80's."

"Typical man. Even on Mars you boys don't ask for directions." Donna rolled her eyes dramatically.

"Mars?" Zach asked eagerly.

The Doctor pulled a sour face at Donna.

"Where are we going?" Dan asked resting against the padded railing by the controls within the TARDIS. Zach went to his father to act as support.

"We're going to where I'm from -- Gallifrey."

"You said it was—" Donna broke off abruptly.

"Destroyed, yes," he confirmed. "But we're not going there to take in the views -- there's an opening there that looks directly into the time vortex. When I was a boy, on your eighth birthday, you would be taken to the wilderness -- to where the void was guarded by technology and the concentrations of dozens of guardians -- and you would look into the vortex."

"And?"

"It wakens everything we are -- that glimpse into the heart of the universe." The Doctor   
had a lost, sad look.

"Heart of the Universe." Dan paused. "Lets get going."

"Allons-y," Donna stage-whispered to the Doctor.

"Allons-y," the Doctor confirmed. "Hold that one." He set Zach holding on to a lever.   
"And if you could turn this about... that fast." He had Donna turn a crank while banging a knob with a ballpeen hammer. "And we're off." The engines began pumping bringing out a small smile from Dan. The Doctor locked eyes with him for a brief moment and understanding passed between them.  
\--  
The TARDIS juddered uncertainly to park as though it very badly didn't want to be where it was. From somewhere the Doctor had produced two steaming glasses of pond scum which he offered to father and son. "What's this?" Dan asked, looking at the concoction uncertainly.

"Mental blend -- stimulates the synapses. Herbals, tea, protein for a bit of a boost. Normally you'd get something quite a lot nastier but the human metabolism wouldn't take it. Donna? Why don't you take Zach to the wardrobe and find yourselves some robes of state or something suitably sober for the occasion."

"Why don't you want us here?" Donna hissed to the Doctor.

"People can have a violent reaction to looking into the naked time vortex. I don't want to scare Zach before his turn."

"What's this going to be like?" Dan asked, setting down his empty glass of scum.

"It's different for every person. You might be inspired. You might be scared. I don't know how it will be for you beyond that it will open up a Time Lord's consciousness in you."

"But this will cure me?"

"It will change you in ways you can't imagine, and you won't be sick any longer. That's all I can guarantee."

Dan squared his shoulders. "Lets do this thing."

"I got us as close as I dare. Just look into the center." The Doctor put on a pair of large welder's goggles and threw open the TARDIS doors. They were floating in the vastness of space in an asteroid field. Dan's eyes were inexorably drawn to a single point --he blinked heavily, eyes glazing. The TARDIS drifted through the asteroids, drawn closer to the vortex. "I can..." He dropped to his knees, a bright golden light drawn from the swirl of the vortex towards him, pulsing, snaking regally around chunks of rock. The Doctor moved to steady Dan who looked as though he was on the verge of collapse. With a subsonic force the light slammed into Dan, knocking them both into a sprawl from which they did not recover. Dan gasped weakly, "Woah."

"Are you okay?" The Doctor asked.

"Is it over?" Dan coughed. "I feel kinda tingly."

"Tingly -- that's good. Up you get." They stumbled to the command chair. "Just relax now." The Doctor pulled out his stethoscope and listened to both sides of his chest. "Hmm."

"Hmm?"

"This might hurt a bit. Quite a lot, actually."

"Thanks for the—” Dan tried to bend double with a groan of pain, but the Doctor braced him firmly upright.

"Breathe," the Doctor commanded as the light and the power of a regeneration built in Dan. It exploded out of him, curling the collar of his shirt back. The Doctor absorbed some of the energies through his palms and the rest shot into the walls of the TARDIS, ricocheting back to slam once more into his chest. Dan fell from the chair in spite of the Doctor's best efforts, unconscious.

"Doctor? I heard shouting. Are you lot okay?"

The Doctor felt for a pulse. "Yeah. We're fine. I could use some help getting Dan to bed, though."

Two sets of feet rushed down the spiral staircase from the wardrobe. Zach's eyes went wide at the sight of his unconscious father. "What _happened_?"

"He's fine -- the regeneration just hit him. He needs a nap and some tea and he'll be fine.

"Oogh," Donna groaned, helping to hoist the large man up. They managed to get him to a couch by the kitchen.

"Is this what will happen to me?" Zach asked, sitting on the couch with his father's body.

The Doctor developed a surprisingly unconvincing innocent look which grew very serious. "His Time Lord physiology was winning out over his human one and now that it's been fully awakened it's remaking him as a healthy human Time Lord, whatever that means. He's just sleeping."

"Well that's reassuring,” Donna replied sarcastically. She got right up next to the Doctor and hissed, "Do you really expect this boy to go do what just laid his dad out like a dead dog?"

"No," Doctor hissed back, "I don't. But-"

"I'll do it," Zach said. "Dad warned me."

"About what?" Donna asked kindly.

"That because of what he could do I might have to do some things that I didn't like -- things that scared me."

"We should really wait for your dad to wake up," Donna said.

"No," the Doctor disagreed. "If he wants to do this he gets to do this." An unspoken conversation shot betwixt the two ending in Donna's acquiescence. "You drank the—”

"Protein shake from hell?"

"Watch your language young man," the Doctor admonished. "To the control room then."

Zach's stare deep into the time vortex was anticlimactic compared to his father's. He stared for long minutes and bolted towards the rear of the TARDIS. The Doctor caught him, holding him at the shoulders. "What did you see?"

"Everything. I know why dad is like that, now."

"Good," The Doctor murmured. "You should come have some chocolate milk, then, and we'll see how Dan is doing."

Dan was still unconscious in the kitchen, but the pained expression had eased and he was in a deep sleep.  
\--  
Dan woke with a deep breath and a start. Zach had fallen asleep curled against his father for the first time in years and somehow remained asleep. It was obviously not the first rude awakening Dan had experienced, as he squinted at his surroundings and took a physical stock. "What's going on?"

Donna was on watch with a cuppa and looked up startled at his voice. "You're feeling better, then?" she asked.

"Different, yeah." He rose, lying his son down on the couch and frowned. "Really different." He breathed deeply.

"That would be the two hearts."

"Two what?"

"Hearts. It's a Time Lord thing."

Dan rolled his eyes in a manner which clearly said, 'right...'. "I have all this stuff running through my head; meaning of the universe stuff."

"Sounds like a bit much."

"It is," Dan agreed. "And it isn't. It belongs there." He smiled. "College math never made so much sense."

"You've got one up on me then." Donna smiled. "I'm Donna Noble, by the way. The Doctor is terribly rude and in the rush—"

"Dan Vasser." They shook hands. "How long have you traveled with the Doctor?"

"A few months," Donna replied breezily. "He ruined my wedding and I ended up traveling with him."

"What happened to Rose?" Dan asked.

Donna frowned. "I don't really know. He doesn't like to talk about her much." At Dan's prompting look, she sighed. "She's locked away in some alternate universe. All he'll ever say most of the time is, 'she's safe'."

"Huh."

"I _know_. Sometimes I want to wring his skinny neck and get him to talk plain."

"Given my new perspective on all of this? I think he's talking as plainly as he can." Donna frowned. "I think he..." Dan frowned, looking for the right words. "He lives here, with us, but also on this other plane of existence, ya know?"

Donna hmmed disapprovingly. "I always got the feeling his thoughts were on another world."

"This is so weird. And that is coming from someone who spontaneously traveled through time for five years. Everything is changing so fast I can't—" He rubbed his forehead furiously and looked up, a dawning realization. "I'm an alien now, aren't I?"

"Definitely not human by my reckoning." Donna shrugged, "but I don't particularly care."

"What am I going to tell Katie?"

"Katie?"

"My wife."

"Well if she put up with you blipping in and out for years, I shouldn't think an extra heart would give her much pause."

"I hope you're right. Hey -- at least there's no more of that dying of cancer problem."

Donna barked a laugh. "There is that. And you got a big brain like Spaceboy, now. Though you gotta watch out for getting a fat head."

After a pause, "Can you really feel both of them beating? The Doctor always goes on about it but I thought he was just a load of rubbish."

"Yeah, I can. Two hearts?" Dan asked once more, still not believing.

"You're the one who's got 'em." Donna shrugged.

Dan leaned against a wall, "So the tumor I had was a second heart trying to grow?"

"Yep!" The Doctor popped into the kitchen, grinning broadly. "Dual cardiopulmonary system is the only way to go in my opinion. Don't know how humans do it most of the time. You're very lucky. The TARDIS and I were able to syphon off enough energy that you were just healed and didn't go through a full regeneration."

"That's when you change into some new bloke,” Donna filled in.

"Every molecule. You come out a different man. But enough chit chat. Seeing as you're up and about I should be getting you back to your wife!"  
\--  
Dan liked Donna, just as he'd liked Rose, but when he looked at her now there was something different about her. Some part of his Time Lordiness whispered that she was important -- that she stood squarely over a lay-line in time and space, and that she was a person to be monitored very closely and protected. "I feel all out of rhythm." Dan groused at the Doctor, rolling his shoulders in discomfort for what must have been the twentieth time that hour.

"Really? I always felt rather naked when one of them stopped. That and I was dying." 

The Doctor shrugged infuriatingly. "Everything is in order, if that makes you feel better."

"Is there anything else I need to know about Time Lords?" Dan asked, looking around the control room of the TARDIS with new wonder.

"Stay away from jalapeno chiles, cosmic rays and interdimensional time wars and you should be fine. You should try out your TARDIS soon as well -- she's nearly grown and if she doesn't get used to a pilot she'll never settle."

"I don't know how to fly one of these."

"Oi -- you let Mr. Reporter from San Francisco fly a TARDIS but I can't change the microwave to make decent chips?"

"It's a food-o-mat and it's HIS TARDIS," the Doctor hissed at Donna. To Dan, "You'll figure it out -- that's part of being a Time Lord. You'll make mistakes, but you'll fix them."

"I wish I had your confidence in me."

"And if you feel like you're dying, go to your TARDIS. She'll keep you safe while you regenerate and it'll make the whole process much easier."

"Got it."

"Can I regenerate?" Zach asked eagerly. He had been forgotten in the rush to get them home in one piece.

"In due time, young man," the Doctor said fondly. "Not for many years to come, I hope, but when you need to you will." The Doctor threw the TARDIS into gear and landed in their garden once more. It seemed to have a fondness for their japanese maple, which it once again landed on top of. It was late afternoon of the same day.  
\--  
Katie and Dan lay in bed, her head resting on his chest. "This is weird," she murmured.

Dan hmmed in assent. "At least there's no more wheeze."

"So much for the yearly physical." They lay in silence for a long moment. "This is weird. So are you still human, or am I the first woman in history to be sleeping with an   
alien?"

"Judging from the Doctor's cavalier attitude towards alien-human contact, I would guess you're far from the first." Katie snuffled a laugh on his pajama top, listening intently to the four-beat hearts of a Time Lord. "I'm still me, Katie. I still love you."

"Even with all the knowledge of time and space?" she asked in a small voice.

"Even more because of it." He kissed the top of her head. "I'd be lost in all of this, without you."


	3. Epilogue

Livia ran her tongue over her top teeth in a nervous gesture. A young man had been watching her for the last half hour, surreptitious though it was, from the bar. The 70's were as groovy as she remembered them to be, but it was a little less fun as a sixty something widow. As she was lost in thought the man had sat down next to her.

"Excuse me," she looking askance at him. He was shorter than her and quite slim with dark hair and an unstylish sweater.

He grinned widely at her. "How do you stay so beautiful?" The silence stretched and he laughed nervously. "You really don't recognize me, do you?"

She smiled regretfully. "I really don't -- I'm sorry. Maybe you have the wrong woman."

"Livia. It's me." At her blank look. "It's Dan."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You're-"

"Dan," he repeated, smiling widely. "In the, admittedly new, flesh."

"Holy crap," she said after a pause. "Wow."

“You know how I told you about the Doctor, right at the end there?” Their traveling had petered off and their times crossing paths had become less and less frequent until one day, about twenty years prior, Livia had never traveled again. Dan had told her about the extraordinary reason for the fall off in time travel necessity. She nodded. “I have so many things to show you, Liv. It’s gonna change everything.”

“Change everything how?” she asked.

He held out her hand to her. “Come with me and see?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading all the way to the end. Questions, comments, concerns, or concrit are always appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts, comments, questions, and concerns are always appreciated. If you spotted problems please let me know so I Can correct them!


End file.
